Data from: The influence of recent social experience and physical environment on courtship and male aggression

Background: Social and environmental factors can profoundly impact an individual’s investment of resources into different components of reproduction. Such allocation trade-offs are expected to be amplified under challenging environmental conditions. To test these predictions, we used a desert-dwelling fish, the desert goby, Chlamydogobius eremius, to experimentally investigate the effects of prior social experience (with either a male or a female) on male investment in courtship and aggression under physiologically benign and challenging conditions (i.e., low versus high salinity). Results: We found that males maintained a higher level of aggression towards a rival after a recent encounter with a female, compared to an encounter with a male, under low (but not high) salinity. In contrast, male investment in courtship behaviour was unaffected by either salinity or social experience. Conclusion: Together, our results suggest that male investment in aggression and courtship displays can differ in their sensitivity to environmental conditions and that not all reproductive behaviours are similarly influenced by the same environmental context.

研究背景：社会与环境因素可显著影响个体对繁殖各环节的资源投入。此类资源分配权衡在恶劣环境条件下会被进一步放大。为验证上述预测，我们以栖息于沙漠环境的鱼类——沙漠虾虎鱼（desert goby，Chlamydogobius eremius）为实验对象，探究了在生理适宜与胁迫环境（即低盐度与高盐度条件）下，过往社交经历（与雄性或雌性个体互动）对雄性求偶与攻击行为投入的影响。
实验结果：我们发现，在低盐度（而非高盐度）环境中，雄性在近期与雌性个体互动后，对同类竞争者的攻击水平显著高于与雄性互动后的情况。与之相对，雄性的求偶行为投入不受盐度或社交经历的影响。
研究结论：综合来看，本研究结果表明，雄性在攻击行为与求偶展示上的投入对环境条件的敏感性存在差异，且并非所有繁殖行为都会受到相同环境背景的同等程度影响。